Bitwig Studio 6 details revealed, and editing gets a big boost

We get it. After years of DAWs leapfrogging in similar directions, the new generation of music tools made it easier to start projects, get inspiration, and improvise. But sometimes they played catchup on editing and automation. Bitwig Studio 6’s details are here, and it feels like editing automation, clips, and more are looking as fresh as those other tools, all in an updated UI. The beta is out now.

Beta testing is free now if you’re ready to give this a look. You’ll need an active Upgrade Plan (as of today) for Studio, Producers, or even Essentials. Final release is due in the fall.

There’s something refreshing about v6. No AI or stem separation. No gimmicky effects or instruments. No wizards to Help You Start An Indie Rock Project With An Automated Player. (We’ll leave to FL to add some weird dancing anime character, but we love them for that.)

No, this is more like the DAW update a lot of engineers and users would want. Make editing better.

• Switch to Automation Mode. Hit ‘A’ to overlay each track with the last-touched parameter or any other single lane. (So that’s different than other DAWs like Logic and Live, which toggle on all lanes at once — this is nice for quick, focused editing.)
• Improved editing gestures. Grab/drag/overwrite more easily.
• Spread, hold, and curvature automation behaviors.
• Improved tools like the new Spray Can, an Audition tool for previewing tracks and clips, and more optimized Pencil. Pencil and Spray Can also now show previews.
• Automation Clips that exist alongside existing clips — with even a parent note/audio clip relationship. This is sort of like how we always wished “dummy clips” would work in Bitwig Studio and Ableton Live.
• Improved expression editing with gain, pressure, etc. directly on notes. (This will be familiar to Cubase users, etc.)
• Edit multiple clips together via Detail Editor Panel.

Clip Aliases. Instead of just duplicating a clip, you get a kind of master template that impacts all clips sharing the same pattern. (Logic has this, for instance — and both for audio and MIDI regions, also referred to as aliases. Anyone who has done desktop publishing, it’s also akin to features like InDesign’s Master Pages, etc.)

Project-Wide Key Signatures are a thing, too, working across Piano Roll / Snap to Key / note FX. (Sorry to compare, but yes, that means some catchup with Ableton Live.) There’s also an Adapt to Key function that works with that, plus new Grid modules for pitch and key, including Scale, Scale Steps, and Root Key.

And there’s an updated interface:

• Palette of editing tools on the right
• Grid adjustments
• Arranger Auto Zoom
• Clip Launcher shows position and loop count
• More dynamic Track headers
• …and lots of other little options/tweaks

But no themes yet! Come on, Bitwig! I want to see Bitwig Studio in Hotdog Stand colors. Just because we all live in Berlin and everything is grayscale seven months out of the year doesn’t mean we can’t make our studio more like a Colombian sound system!

One more thing: I wish a certain other Berlin-developed DAW worked this way automatically:

When you open a project made in a previous version of the software, a permanent backup of
the original project file will be saved, with the version number noted in the name.

Any Bitwig community users out there who want to weigh in or share your videos, you can always get in touch.

Here’s the full detailed information — how to test on Windows, macOS, and Linux (including DEB/Debian and Ubuntu and Flatkpak), plus complete version release notes for Beta 1:

Beta Testing of Bitwig Studio 6.0

and a summary:

What’s New

Bitwig software is also available on Plugin Boutique:

If you buy something from a CDM link, we may earn a commission.

Bitwig Studio at Plugin Boutique

Enjoy!

Side note: I’m probably less excited by scale stuff, just because I love getting away from just keys but — I get it. For working with other musical practices, we’ll check in again soon with Hany. Now is a good time to review this (and while this covers Arabic music, folks trained in other musical practices might approach this in a similar way):

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